Amongst a sea of
hot takes on the Slava Voynov front, there were other interesting news blurbs in regards to Kings players in the past 48 hours.
Elliotte Friedman posted his regular, almost mandatory,
30 Thoughts late Wednesday evening.
In it, not only did he talk about Voynov, but he also talked about Drew Doughty and Jake Muzzin. The two defenseman have been up in Ontario practicing together in Late August in preparation for the upcoming season.
Some of the things they have been working on?
They didn’t pair in scrimmages — “I see enough of him,” Muzzin joked — but did work on a few things.
“We looked at all our shot attempts and practised getting them through more often,” he said. “Being more mobile on the blueline, changing the angles…shooting off different feet. What else can we do instead of making a dead play? We play so many games, you get tendencies and habits…good and bad ones. We worked to change the bad ones.” Muzzin also watched a lot of video of himself, seeing if there were different reads to make on the penalty kill and “whether you’re leading the rush or the fourth man, being more aggressive — or less — and still being an option.”
By nature defensemen have a lot of shots blocked. That is just how it works when you take all of your shots from the furthest spot out in the offensive zone on a regular basis. They have to traverse a sea of legs and skates before getting to a 6-foot-4 behemoth in giant rubber pads. It can lead to a lot of great opportunities for misdirection, fake slap passes, and deflection goals, but it can also lead to painfully low shooting percentages. Your average defenseman does not have a high shooting percentage. Trevor Daley last year shot at 14.2% last year, which is over double his career average of 6.5%. Drew Doughty shot at a 3.2%, almost half his career average of 6.1%. Muzzin shot at a 5.8%, which is pretty standard for NHL defensemen.
Still, when you factor in that Drew Doughty's 219 shots last season ranked 7th overall amongst defenseman, A 3.2% shooting percentage which led to seven total goals seems even more like a lost opportunity. His personal shooting percentage on the powerplay was even worse. A mere 1.72 percent. Amongst regular defenseman who played on the powerplay for their respective teams, that was amongst the worst. Six players did not register goals in their powerplay time, and then there was Doughty. When put into raw numbers, both Doughty and Muzzin were two of the most regularly shot-blocked defensemen in the league.
Doughty ranked third overall in the league in having his shots blocked at 5v5, with 136. He was actually second in the league behind Ottawa's Erik Karlsson if you take out Brent Burns of the San Jose Sharks. Burns swapped back and forth between defense and forward, which may have altered his shots attempted. Muzzin came in at seventh overall (Again, sixth sans Burns), with 99 of his shot attempts blocked. No other team had two of their own players in the the top 15, and only one other had two in the top 20. (Chicago; Duncan Keith at 5th, Hjalmarsson at 17th)
Things get a little better when viewing the powerplay, but Doughty still ranked in at 15th overall in having his shots blocked by opponents on the powerplay. All situations considered, Doughty and Muzzin were arguably the easiest defensive pair in the league to block shots against. On one side of the coin, you can say that it is great that the Kings have the puck that much. You cannot get your shots blocked if you are not trying to shoot right? On the more negative side of things you have to think about lost opportunities created by blocked shots when you couple how dominant a possession pair they are. Put simply, the Kings top pairing were just way too easy to block shots against last year.
Doughty is a crafty and talented player, but getting shots through from the point is arguably one of the weakest overall facets of his game right now. With all that in mind, it is good to hear he and Jake Muzzin are both actively searching for ways to improve these numbers. Especially since the Los Angeles powerplay (and sometimes offense) thrives so much on the quarterbacking play of Drew Doughty and the puck moving ability of Jake Muzzin.
Another interesting grab from the 30 Thoughts article in regards to Doughty, is the following:
Doughty, who skated 140 more minutes than anyone in the NHL last season, said he was told in his exit meetings the Kings want him to drop from 29 to 25 minutes per game. A noble idea, but we’ll see if Darryl Sutter and John Stevens can hold back when crunch time comes, especially now that Voynov is gone.
Doughty simply played too much last year in the eyes of the Kings. This year, however, should be much better.
While Friedman does mention that it will be difficult when "Crunch time comes" due to the Voynov departure, it is important to remember that Voynov did not exist last year as is. Other players had to make an effort to pick up more minutes than usual. Alec Martinez and Jake Muzzin saw increases in their average ice time, as did the now retired Robyn Regehr.
With the Kings picking up Christian Ehrhoff and getting another season of Brayden McNabb, their should be plenty of minutes available to distribute to those players. McNabb's average ice time in the first 40 or so games of the season was around 15:40 a night. In the second half he saw an increase overall of about a minute to 16:40. In the final 10 games of the season he was playing close to 18 minutes a night.
Darryl Sutter likes to know his defensemen before he trusts them with higher volume minutes and higher pressure situations. He did so with Alec Martinez when he was brought on board to coach back in 2011-12, and he did so last year with McNabb. Despite McNabb's sound overall play, Sutter eased him into more minutes slowly but surely. Next year should be a true test. Between McNabb getting around 17-18 minutes, and Ehrhoff getting just around 20-22 minutes, there should not be a problem backing Doughty off. The major concern, as with all seasons, will be health. This is all dependent upon the Kings defensive corps staying relatively healthy as a whole.
For the rest of Friedman's 30 thoughts,
follow the link either earlier in the article or right here. There are things on Voynov and Kopitar in the article as well.
It remains one of the most interesting recurring pieces in hockey journalism.
With the extended off-season, the Kings have had extra time to reset and work on little things that may have escaped them. Things like getting shots through and looking for better opportunities to do so. Hopefully they pay dividends in 2015-16.
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